An exuberant ‘Turangalîla’ from Boston Symphony Orchestra
As the final, exuberant, extended chord of the fifth movement of Messiaen’s “Turangalîla-Symphonie” dissipated into the air of Symphony Hall on Thursday evening, someone began to clap and was quickly shushed. Moments later, the same thing happened. The program book had requested that noise between movements be kept to a minimum as the performances, led by BSO music director Andris Nelsons with soloists Yuja Wang (piano) and Cécile Lartigau (ondes martenot), were being recorded for future release on Deutsche Grammophon.
Regardless, asking for silence after the fifth movement of “Turangalîla” is probably an exercise in futility. That fifth movement, titled “Joie du sang des etoiles” — joy of the blood of the stars — is among the most ecstatic experiences the orchestral repertoire offers, and if it’s performed well, at least a handful of listeners will be tempted to dance in the aisles. If no one so much as claps after that — something has gone terribly wrong.
“Turangalîla,” which includes 10 movements across 80-ish minutes, is both devilishly complicated music and a logistical nightmare ballet to perform live. Not only does the piece call for a colossal orchestra and piano soloist with Olympian endurance, but it requires a player of the ondes martenot, an early electronic instrument that can be best described as a cross between a piano and a theremin. At various points in the score, Messiaen demands it coo, buzz, shriek, and whoop.
The BSO has understandably not performed the piece too regularly since its 1949 world premiere, despite its status as one of the best-known commissions to come out of the Koussevitzky era. However, it has been on Nelsons’s wish list for several years — he mentioned it in an interview I did with him a few years before the pandemic — and it was an easy fit for the decadent “Music for the Senses” series that concludes with this week’s programs, if anything about “Turangalîla” can truly be called easy.
From last month’s Wayne Shorter program to “Music for the Senses,” this has been an intense few weeks for the players, but if anyone’s tired, it didn’t show. The low brass section’s rendition of the craggy “statue theme” was thoroughly bonerattling, and clarinetists William Hudgins and Christopher Elchico’s “flower theme” was an auditory caress. This week’s guest concertmaster was Vineta Sareika-Völkner, of the Berlin Philharmonic, and she mustered the strings with gusto.
About that pianist with Olympian endurance: The orchestra stacked the deck in their favor by tapping the brilliant Yuja Wang, one of the most prolific modern “Turangalîla” soloists. I saw her do the same piece in 2016 with the New York Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen, and just as she did then, she performed with agility, acuity, and above all, a keen understanding of the role the piano must play. Though there are moments when the solo piano is unleashed, “Turangalîla” is not a concerto. The piano and ondes martenot are critical ensemble instruments more than they are vehicles for soloists, and Wang was duly assertive without being aggressive.
Perhaps unsurprisingly for those familiar with his typical approach, Nelsons didn’t take a very strong interpretive tack. Maybe as a result, the final third of the performance lost considerable momentum, which returned in the bounding finale. Momentum notwithstanding, though, in the very best “Turangalîla” performances, the agony and ecstasy feels completely immersive; this one felt like watching it all happen to another person, the main character of a movie perhaps. However, if it were a movie, it would be “Everything Everywhere All at Once”; a colorful sensory overload and emotional labyrinth, with a center of irrepressible joy.